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MacDonagh was born in Dublin on St Cecilia's Day in 1912. He was still a young child when his father Thomas MacDonagh, an Irish nationalist and poet, was executed in 1916. Tragedy struck again when his mother died of a heart attack a year afterwards while swimming at Skerries to Lambay, County Dublin on 9 July 1917. The two children were then taken care of by their maternal aunts, in particular Catherine Wilson.

He was married twice, to Maura Smyth and, following her death after she drowned in a bath whilst having an epileptic seizure, to her sister, Nuala Smyth. He had four children, Iseult & Breifne by Maura and Niall & Barbara by Nuala.

In 1941 he was appointed a District Justice in County Mayo. To date, he remains the youngest person appointed as a judge in Ireland. He was Justice for the Dublin Metropolitan Courts at the time of his death.

He published three volumes of poetry: "Veterans and Other Poems" (1941), The Hungry Grass (1947) and A Warning to Conquerors (1968). He also edited the Oxford Book of Irish Verse (1958) with Lennox Robinson.

He also wrote poetic dramas and ballad operas. One play, Happy As Larry, was translated into a number of languages. He had three other plays produced: God's Gentry (1951, a ballad opera about the tinkers), Lady Spider (1959, about Deirdre of the Sorrows and the Three sons of Ussna and by far his best writing) and Step in the Hollow a piece of situation comedy nonsense.

He also wrote short stories; published Twenty Poems with Niall Sheridan; staged the first Irish production of ‘’Murder in the Cathedral’’ with Liam Redmond, later his brother-in-law; and was a popular broadcaster on Radio Éireann.

1946 - Happy As Larry, Maurice Fridberg, London 1946
A ballad opera. The most successful play in London in post-war years though produced unsuccessfully in New York in an elaborate production by Burgess Meredith. Has been translated into a number of languages